the former continent, have opened a gulf betwixt the West Indies and
the extreme northern land; but such a one that either is not to be
travelled for the causes in the first objection alleged, or clean
shut up from us in Europe by Greenland, the south end whereof
Moletius maketh firm land with America, the north part continent
with Lapland and Norway.

Thirdly, the greatest favourers of this voyage cannot deny but that,
if any such passage be, it lieth subject unto ice and snow for the
most part of the year, whereas it standeth in the edge of the frosty
zone. Before the sun hath warmed the air and dissolved the ice,
each one well knoweth that there can be no sailing; the ice once
broken through the continual abode, the sun maketh a certain season
in those parts. How shall it be possible for so weak a vessel as a
ship is to hold out amid whole islands, as it were, of ice
continually beating on each side, and at the mouth of that gulf,
issuing down furiously from the north, safely to pass, when whole
mountains of ice and snow shall be tumbled down upon her?

Well, grant the West Indies not to continue continent unto the Pole,
grant there be a passage between these two lands, let the gulf lie
nearer us than commonly in cards we find it set, namely, between the
sixty-first and sixty-fourth degrees north, as Gemma Frisius in his
maps and globes imagineth it, and so left by our countryman
Sebastian Cabot in his table which the Earl of Bedford hath at
Theinies; let the way be void of all difficulties, yet doth it not
follow that we have free passage to Cathay. For example's sake, you
may coast all Norway, Finmarke, and Lapland, and then bow southward
to St. Nicholas, in Moscovy. You may likewise in the Mediterranean
Sea fetch Constantinople and the mouth of the Don, yet is there no